Make Your Students The Federal Reserve Chair

Bring Rapunzl's econ mini-game Run The Fed to your classroom and provide students with the same tools as a Central Bank to guide us through crisis. Students steer the economy through booms and busts by adjusting the federal funds rate, learning why the Fed's dual mandate is harder than it looks.

~3 hours
High School Economics
Built into Rapunzl

View Rate the Loan

Clay illustration of the Rapunzl tycoon at a Federal Reserve podium with inflation and unemployment gauges

Analyze The Economy, Set The Rate

Each turn is one quarter. Students read the news, check the dual-mandate gauges, and move the rate in 25-basis-point steps. Then they commit their decision and see the economic outcomes. Like the real world, decision outcomes typically lag by a few quarters and each decision compounds to provide students with real-world implications from their decisions.

Run the Fed scenario select screen with campaign scenarios to play

Setting the federal funds rate in Run the Fed

Access Real-World Scenarios

Six campaign scenarios ramp from a sleepy economy to a stagflation trap. Students are dropped into a disguised real crisis and only after playing do they learn they were fighting Volcker's inflation, steering the 2008 crash, or navigating the pandemic.

Their rate path is compared, quarter by quarter, against what the real Fed actually did to dive deeper into economic history throughout the student's learning experience.

The Sleepy EconomyWake up a flat economy
Too Hot to HandleCool demand without a crash
The OvershootPatience after the medicine
Stagflation StationTwo problems, one lever
Anchors AwayRe-anchor expectations
The Soft LandingThe hardest trick in economics
"The Fever"Blind history run
"The Freeze"Blind history run
"The Whipsaw"Blind history run

Q1 · BRIEFING

The Sleepy Economy

Growth is flat, prices are calm, and hiring has stalled. The board wants to know: how low do you go, and how fast?

INFLATIONtarget 2.0%

UNEMPLOYMENTnatural 4.5%

Embedded Historical Lessons

Every reveal unlocks a mini-lesson tied to the era: what the Fed saw, what it chose, what happened next. Scoring uses a dual-mandate credibility score that rewards closeness to target, steadiness, and reasoning — not luck.

This whole simulation slots into Rapunzl's economics curriculum with pacing guides, activities, and assessments, so play converts into instruction you can defend to a department head.

Explore the Curriculum

Run the Fed reveal comparing a student's rate path to the real Fed's

"The Fever" was Volcker's War, 1979–1982Inflation had sat near 14% for two years and nobody believed it would come down. Paul Volcker pushed the federal funds rate past 19%, which broke the price spiral and cost the country a recession and 10% unemployment. Students who take the gentler path here protect the jobs and never get inflation expectations back.

The Freeze revealed as the 2008 Great Recession

"The Freeze" was the Great Recession, 2008Home prices were sliding, banks had stopped lending to each other, and ordinary rate cuts were not reaching anyone. The Fed went to zero by December 2008 and started buying bonds because it had run out of room to cut. Most students move too slowly here, then spend the rest of the run trying to catch up.

Part of a Full High School Economics Course

Run the Fed anchors the monetary-policy unit of our 14-week High School Economics course, aligned to national standards and built around an economic-indicator dashboard with 70+ years of data.

See the Economics Course

Rapunzl High School Economics course, aligned to national standards

Bring Run the Fed to your classroom

Request access and we'll walk you through the game and the economics course it belongs to.